Lansing, MI – Four Michigan adults have been charged with conspiring to kidnap, rape, and torture a young child to death.

The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force said that the group was getting ready to abduct a child when their plot was discovered by police, WOOD-TV reported.

The investigation into 37-year-old David Bailey, 32-year-old Matthew Toole, 32-year-old Talia Furman, and 19-year-old Jayme LaPointe began after Michigan State Police came upon their texts and chat messages planning the crime while investigating child pornography.

The suspects had been using their own children to make sexually-abusive material, according to the Detroit Free Press.

“They committed acts on their own children and were making sexually abusive material,” Michigan State Police Sergeant Gerald Yott told the Detroit Free Press. “They were all sharing and exploiting their own children and other children.”

Sgt. Yott also said the suspects discussed how to kidnap a child where there were no cameras present, as well as how to dispose of the body and destroy evidence.

He said the suspects’ text messages and chats indicated a plan to rape and kill a child they had abducted at a county fair or parade, or in a store parking lot.

“It was something they had chatted about and they had met in person to formulate their plan,” Sgt. Yott told the Detroit Free Press. “To our knowledge they did not execute their plan and there were no child victims.”

Police said the suspects had met through loose associations and similar sexual proclivities such as three-way relationships.

They began planning to kidnap and rape a young child in the fall of 2017, and continued plotting the crime through the summer of 2018, according to the Detroit Free Press.

On Sept. 21, the Michigan Attorney General announced the charges against all four suspects that included conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, and conspiracy to commit criminal sexual conduct.

All three charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison, according to a press statement by the state’s attorney general.